


Who Needs a Great Dane?

by steelplatedhearts



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 08:15:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelplatedhearts/pseuds/steelplatedhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Ten bucks says it’s a dude in a suit,” Eponine says in the sudden silence following the ghostly biker’s disappearance. <br/>“You’re on,” Jehan says, spitting in his hand and shaking Eponine’s. <br/>“Well gang, it looks like we have another mystery on our hands!” Bahorel says gleefully, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s split up and look for clues.”<br/>“You know, someday you’ll get tired of those references,” Cosette says with a smile.<br/>“But it is not this day!” Bahorel cries, launching himself over the table.<br/>----<br/>Jehan, Cosette, Bahorel, and Eponine travel around in a van solving mysteries, contacting the dead, and, on occasion, scamming people. It's a living, at least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Needs a Great Dane?

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a Scooby-Doo AU. Then it got way out of control and I have no idea what it is anymore. WHOOPS.

“We should get a dog,” Bahorel says once they’ve settled on top of the van for the night. His cigarette glows in the darkness, and even by the dim light Eponine can see his smirk.

She snorts. “Are you shitting me? We’re not getting a dog.”

“Why not?” Bahorel asks as he stretches his legs out, dangling them over the side of the van. “We could get a fucking wolfhound or something—tell me that wouldn’t be cool.”

“We could name him Larry!” Cosette pipes up from the sweater she’s sharing with Jehan. “Or Stacy, if it’s a girl.”

“Maybe we could teach it to talk,” Jehan says, snuggling closer to Cosette. “Then we could _really_ be the Scooby-Doo gang.”

“You realize it’ll probably crap all over the van, right?” Eponine asks dryly. “I’m sure as hell not going to be the one to pick up after it.”

*   *   *   *   *            

They live in the van, now. Permanent housing is expensive (solving mysteries doesn’t pay well), and anyway they prefer the freedom of being able to move around at a moment’s notice. Cosette’s painted an elaborate mural on the side, full of witches and ghosts and monsters, and Eponine and Jehan have decorated the inside with jewel-toned pillows, rugs, and drapes. Bahorel takes care of van maintenance, pulling over and tinkering with the engine once a month in a Walmart parking lot while the others perch on the roof and bask in the sun.

Sometimes they sleep on the mattress in the back—all four of them in a pile, limbs tangled together and hands clasped tight. Sometimes Bahorel sleeps sitting up in the front seat, hands curled protectively around the steering wheel. Cosette leans on him on those nights, using him for a pillow, and Eponine and Jehan huddle together in the back.

On nice nights, they lie side-by-side on the roof of the van, whispering among themselves and staring at the stars.

It is a rather good life, all things considered.

*   *   *   *   *            

Rumors come up the grapevine of a haunted carnival in Arizona, with a substantial reward attached, so Bahorel spins the wheel and takes them down south.

They take a day to enjoy the carnival first, before they get down to any serious investigating. It’s not a bad carnival, as far as these things go. Eponine and Cosette go on the rides, holding hands and shrieking, while Bahorel wins stuffed animal after stuffed animal for Jehan at the midway. Jehan takes them in his arms, holds them tight, and names them: Malus, Atrox, Maleficus.

They meet for lunch, loading up on greasy carnival food and sugar. Cosette perches on Bahorel’s lap and feeds him French fries, smearing ketchup on his face “on accident,” while Eponine and Jehan laugh at them over a shared ice cream cone. 

Which is when a flaming skeleton on an evil-looking motorcycle crashes through the ticket booth, drives up the midway, and disappears, leaving wreckage in its wake.

“Ten bucks says it’s a dude in a suit,” Eponine says in the sudden silence following the ghostly biker’s disappearance.

“You’re on,” Jehan says, spitting in his hand and shaking Eponine’s.

“Well gang, it looks like we have another mystery on our hands!” Bahorel says gleefully, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s split up and look for clues.”

“You know, someday you’ll get tired of those references,” Cosette says with a smile.

“But it is not this day!” Bahorel cries, launching himself over the table.

*   *   *   *   *            

Jehan grows up in a small town a few miles outside of New Orleans. It’s a close community, very tight-knit, and completely haunted.

This, of course, is the point. There are walking tours of the supposedly ghostly spots in town, a haunted hotel, a large haunted house for visitors to explore, and various paranormal attractions scattered across the town. Jehan’s mother has a small storefront where she tells fortunes, capitalizing on her brown skin and large eyes to make the customers believe she tells the truth, that she has some sort of innate knowledge.

When Jehan is seven years old, his mother takes him through the haunted house for the first time. He knows, on some level, that the frights before him are all smoke and mirrors, but on his most present level, he is terrified.

He begins to cry, and his mother scoops him up, drying her tears with her sleeve. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, darling,” she coos. “It’s not real, none of it. Look, there’s Armand. You know him, right?”

The werewolf takes his head off and waves, and Jehan stops crying. He _does_ know Armand—Armand makes him delicious grilled cheese sandwiches, and reads stories to him and the other children, doing a different voice for each character.

He knows Armand, and Armand is not a werewolf.

“It’s not real?” he whispers.

“No,” his mother says fondly, ruffling his hair. “It’s not.”

Jehan is slightly disappointed. “So there’s no such thing as magic, either?”

“Well, I didn’t say that,” his mother says. “There’s magic everywhere, if you know where to look for it.”

Thinking back, Jehan thinks that maybe his mother meant ‘the magic of the human spirit,’ or possibly ‘everyone’s magic in their own way,’ or some other meaningless platitude designed to make children feel a sense of optimism and wonder. His younger self, however, took it as confirmation of ghosts, witches, and monsters.

He checks out his first book on ghosts from the library a week later, and doesn’t look back.

*   *   *   *   *            

“Well ma’am, this should be no problem,” Bahorel says jovially, surveying the room. “Just your garden variety poltergeist—nothing to worry about.”

 The woman doesn’t look reassured in the slightest, so Cosette takes her hands and leads her to the couch. “Why don’t we leave them to their work for now?” she asks, eyes sparkling. “Tell me about yourself.”

The woman’s distracted easily enough, and hardly notices the marks Eponine’s drawing on the floor or Jehan’s soft chanting. There’s something about Cosette that makes her talkative, and she’s halfway through her life story when a gust of wind blows through the house and she remembers what’s going on.

“Oh!” She starts to rise, but Cosette stops her with a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“I think that means you’re safe,” she says, looking to Jehan for confirmation. “No more poltergeist problems.”

The woman thanks them profusely, pays them, and sends them off with a tin of cookies for the road. When they’re hurtling down the highway, Cosette lays her head on Jehan’s lap, swings her feet up on Eponine’s, and carefully records every last scrap of information the woman had given her.

*   *   *   *   *            

When Cosette is two years old, her mother drops her off at a house full of strangers, kisses her forehead, tells her to be good, and leaves.

She leaves to earn enough money to give Cosette a better life, but nobody tells Cosette this. All she knows is that her mother is gone and she’s been left in the care of strangers who don’t care for her at all.

She asks after her mother, asks endless questions, and is consistently told _shut up Cosette, stupid little thing, you don’t know anything, do you?_

So she stops asking.

When she is nine years old, she’s adopted by a kindly older man who tells her, with great sorrow, that her mother is dead.

He seems more open to questions than her previous caretakers, so she tentatively asks about her mother. He tells her stories about her mother’s kindness, her beauty, her laughter.

He never calls her stupid.

But neither does he tell her everything.

He brushes off her questions about his life with _not now, darling_ and _maybe when you’re older_.

It drives her up the wall, and she makes a resolution that when she gets big, she’s going to know everything.

When her papa dies, she’s set adrift, and wanders from place to place, talking to people and finding out their secrets. She doesn’t do anything with the secrets she takes, but she likes knowing them.

She’s in a bar in some small town one night, mining the drunks for their hidden thoughts, when she sees Jehan across the room.

She takes in his beautiful black hair pinned around his head like a crown, his floral print pants and pastel plaid shirt, and the wickedly intelligent gleam in his eyes and thinks: _I want to know what he knows_.

What he knows is ghosts, mostly. Cosette isn’t sure whether she believes him or not, but _he_ seems to believe him, so she goes with it.

They’re talking about a spirit he exorcised in New York City a few months back when he pauses, tilts his head, and says, “You’re quite good at getting people to tell you things, aren’t you?”

“I suppose so,” she says demurely. “I find people interesting.”

“Right,” he says with a smirk. “I could use a talent like that right about now.”

“Oh?” she asks, arching an eyebrow.

“See that man over there?” he asks, indicating a burly man in the corner with a nod of his head. “He knows something about the disappearances in this town that he’s not telling me. But someone as clever as you should have no problem getting him to talk.”

Cosette immediately grabs her drink and heads over to the man with a smile on her face.

Nobody’s ever called her _clever_ before.

*   *   *   *   *            

“Now, let’s see who this spooky scorpion really is!”

“There he goes again with the Scooby-Doo speeches,” Eponine says fondly. “Idiot.”

“It makes him happy,” Jehan says. “And you can’t deny, people love it.”

Bahorel whips the mask off with a flourish, revealing—

“Mr. Holden?” Cosette gasps, playing up her shock.

“That’s right,” Bahorel says, enjoying the performance. “Mr. Holden thought if he could scare people away, his rival would go out of business, leaving the market wide open for him. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for us meddling kids.”

Cosette, Eponine, and Jehan burst into applause as Bahorel takes a grand bow. “Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.”

*   *   *   *   *            

Jehan and Cosette stick together after their initial meeting, drifting from town to town in search of mysteries. In some places they get rid of ghosts and in some places they uncover fakes. In some other places, there aren’t ghosts _or_ fakes, just rattling pipes and overactive imaginations.

In those cases, they pretend there are ghosts anyway, because nobody pays you to advise them to hire a plumber. Jehan strides around the room wafting smoke in the air and shouting impressive sounding Latin while Cosette wraps some spare cloth and duct tape around the offending pipe.

They travel light—two duffle bags for clothes, a backpack for Jehan’s supernatural supplies and Cosette’s notebooks of secrets, and a sleeping bag for those times when they can’t find other lodgings. They travel by train, by greyhound bus, by other people’s cars, and they go where the wind takes them.

They’re walking down a highway in California on an unbearably hot July afternoon. Cosette has no interest in walking terribly far, so she’s put on her tightest pink shorts and has her thumb out like a flag. It doesn’t take long before an old battered van swerves over.

“Where you headed?” a voice from inside calls.

Cosette pushes her sunglasses down to peer over the rims and smiles. “Wherever you’ll take us.” She takes Jehan’s hand and drags him into the car. “He seems nice,” she says in an undertone.

“He looks like a giant bruise,” Jehan mutters.

“I’m Bahorel,” the driver says as Cosette and Jehan settle in.

“I’m Cosette, and this is Jehan. It’s nice to meet you,” Cosette says, smiling sweetly.

“So what are you two doing roaming around out here?” he asks, pulling away from the side of the road.

“We hunt ghosts,” Jehan says, curling up against Cosette’s side.

“Huh,” Bahorel says. “Like Scooby-Doo?”

“Yep,” Cosette chirps. “Except sometimes it’s _not_ old Mr. Jenkins in a mask.”

They regale him with tales of their exploits all the way down to San Diego. Bahorel sticks around, watches them work their magic, and offers to drive them wherever they’re going next.

They end up in Baton Rouge, unmasking a man who dressed up as a werewolf to chase people away from a specific plot of land that supposedly contained buried treasure. Bahorel helps them set up a fairly elaborate trap, and takes great joy in blurting out quotes like “jinkies,” “zoinks,” and “meddling kids.”

He doesn’t offer to drive them again, and they don’t ask. Instead, they just follow him to the van, cuddle up in the back, and let him drive where he pleases.

*   *   *   *   *            

The shows are Bahorel’s idea.

“Helping restless spirits is all very well and good, but driving around on the off chance that you find a case doesn’t put fuel in the tank,” he argues over eggs and bacon at a small diner one morning. “We’ve got enough cash left to rent a stage somewhere, or build our own—I’m good with tools, I could set that up.”

“You’re talking about Spiritualism, aren’t you?” Cosette asks. “Séances, smoke and mirrors—that sort of thing?”

“Exactly.”

“If you think it would work,” Jehan muses, “I’m sure we could get some ghosts to show up.”

“People love haunted shit,” Bahorel says. “We could rake in tons of money from ticket sales, probably.”

So with the last of their money, they rent space for two days in a little community theater, and Cosette plasters the town with flyers. They aren’t expecting a huge turnout on day one, but it turns out there’s not a lot for people to do in this town on a Friday night, and the crowd’s even bigger the next day.

Jehan and Cosette act like they’ve been on the stage together their whole lives, and Bahorel’s glad he’s not up there with them. It’s far more fun to take tickets and just watch them perform.

Jehan completely owns the stage. His voice is surprisingly loud and commanding for someone so slight, and he stares intently at the audience as if he’s looking straight into their souls. His dark skin and black clothes contrast perfectly with Cosette’s pale skin and gauzy white dress. She has a crown of roses perched on her head, and as the designated “vessel,” she speaks softly and stares above the crowd at something nobody can see. For a minute, Bahorel actually believes that she’s really channeling ghosts and that Jehan is really speaking to echoes of the dead.

“You guys are pretty good for a bunch of frauds.”

Bahorel looks down to see a tiny slip of a girl at his elbow. “Who says we’re frauds?”

“A fellow fraud,” she says, smirking. “You can’t con a con, you know. Although,” she muses, “I almost believed it, for a moment.”

“You know why? Because _they_ believe it,” Bahorel says.

“They really believe in ghosts?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

He shrugs. “I think they do. I try not to ask about it.”      

“Hm. Well, if you ever want to graduate to the big leagues of conning, you give me a call.”

“Our van’s out back—make the call yourself. We could use a Velma,” he says with a smirk. She rolls her eyes and leaves, but when the show is over and they’re packed up and ready to drive on, she’s propped up against the door, waiting.

“I figured someone has to teach you how to con _properly_ ,” she drawls, and Bahorel grins as he shakes her hand. “I’m Eponine.”

“Do you mind?” Bahorel asks the others in a low voice.

Jehan smiles. “Not at all.”

Cosette sweeps forward and takes Eponine’s hands, leading her into the van. “It’s lovely to meet you! Come, get settled—I want to know _everything_ about you.”

*   *   *   *   *               

Eponine is tricky and watchful, always looking out for ways to scam the unwitting. She runs cons that don’t accomplish anything, simply because she _can_ —and anyway, she doesn’t know what to do with herself when she’s not pulling the wool over some shmuck’s eyes.

She comes up with a new scheme for them to pull where they haunt houses themselves. It works like this:

They pick a town: any town will do, but small is preferred. Bahorel and Jehan wait in the van on the outskirts of town, setting up camp for a week or two. Eponine and Cosette slip into the town proper, unseen, and haunt a house.

They flit in and out of houses like ghosts, climbing walls and snaking in through windows. They rattle chains, they moan, they turn on taps, and they’re gone by the time the owners come to investigate.

In a few weeks, maybe one if they’re good, the townspeople are well and truly scared.

Which is when the van rolls in and they get ready for a show.

Of _course_ people plagued with ghostly noises come to the show and ask for help. And Jehan provides it—for a small fee, of course.

They do not run this scam often—only when they desperately need the money, as on the whole, Jehan disapproves. Cosette doesn’t quite disapprove, but prefers honest ghosting.

(This is how Eponine and Bahorel discover that Jehan and Cosette wholeheartedly believe in the spirits they contact. They can never quite decide if they want to make fun or worry, so they just don’t do anything.)

*   *   *   *   *            

During the shows, they walk a dangerously fine line between making people believe and making people _believe_.

The first category is harmless—put on a good show where the audience is entertained, where they gasp in wonder at Jehan and Cosette’s skill, where they allow themselves to temporarily believe in magic and ghosts and the supernatural, but never _really_ buy into it.

The second category, making people _believe_ , is much more dangerous.

Sometimes that danger manifests in a desperate person coming to a show and pleading for a talk with some dear departed relative. Jehan and Cosette can usually come up with something quickly enough to placate them, but the mood is always ruined, and they try to wrap up the show quickly after that.

(Bahorel doesn’t think very hard about how Jehan and Cosette know exactly what to say in these situations, or how Cosette knows just how to alter her speech patterns to convince everyone that she _is_ the dead relative. But then again, there are a lot of things he tries not to think about, such as how Cosette manages to make her eyes glow during shows, or how he sometimes hears Jehan whisper into the dark and hears the dark whisper back.)

But sometimes, people truly believe, and they get scared. Their fear turns to anger and spite, and then the danger becomes more real then a slightly disheartened crowd.

They’re at a bar one night, celebrating the first successful show of the weeklong run in this particular town, when a group of men start shooting them hostile glances.

Eponine is the first to notice. She casually sneaks a peek at the other three, who are absorbed in the card tricks Jehan’s doing, and then settles back to keep her eyes on the men. She slowly slides her hand in her pocket, keeping her hand on her knife, just in case.

They keep to themselves, muttering and staring, until finally one man lurches to his feet.

“Time to go,” Eponine says under her breath. “Now.”

Jehan glances up and goes right back to shuffling his cards. “I’m not afraid of them, Ep.”

“And I love you for it, but there’s more of them then there are of us,” Eponine says.

Bahorel stands as the group approaches, blocking Jehan and Cosette from view as best as he can. “Good evening, gentlemen. Can I help you?”

“Witch needs a bodyguard, hmm?” the man asks mockingly.

Eponine tunes out the rest of their conversation, turning back to Jehan. “Look, I know an unfriendly crowd when I see one, okay? This is going to go south, we’re probably going to have to clear out.”

“You know that from years of running cons,” he says. “This isn’t a con, it’s the truth.”

“That might actually just make it _worse_ ,” she mutters. “Just—please trust me on this one?”

“I always trust you,” he says, kissing her cheek. Cosette kisses her other cheek, and they slip out the back exit, hand in hand.

When the door swings shut behind them, Eponine lets out a sigh of relief. Her momentary calm disappears, however, when the most hostile man punches Bahorel in the face.

They escape without any broken bones, luckily, but Eponine and Bahorel have quite a few cuts and bruises between them. They drive until the town is nothing but a memory behind them, and then Cosette insists they pull over.

They stretch out in the back, and Jehan and Cosette set about tending to Bahorel and Eponine’s wounds.

“Those _bastards_ ,” Cosette says, eyes hard.

Jehan hums a little and tucks a stray curl behind Cosette’s ear. “People fear what they don’t understand. You know that.”

“We’re only a little banged up,” Eponine says, squeezing Cosette’s hand. “I’ve been in worse.”

“Besides,” Bahorel says, kissing Jehan’s knuckles, “you two are worth it.”

“So sappy,” Cosette mutters, but she can’t help but smile.

*   *   *   *   *            

They are a family.

Sometimes Cosette wanders off, goes on walks with sweet boys who bring her daisies (on those occasions when they’re in a town long enough to properly meet people), and sometimes Jehan spends the majority of his time in crowds, holding court among the people who are drawn to his intensity, but they always return.

Cosette weaves the daisies into a crown for Bahorel, and whispers the boy’s secrets into Eponine’s neck, and Jehan lets the intensity in his eyes fade when he curls up in the middle of them back in the van on Scooby-Doo Marathon nights.

Bahorel is the loud one, the boisterous one, the one who shakes hands with strangers and laughs long and loud, who makes their particular brand of _weird_ palatable for the rest of the world by covering it up with catchphrases and cartoon references. Eponine is quiet, watchful, eyes darting around like a hawk on those occasions that Bahorel can’t quite disguise their oddness and people start to wonder, a question creeping into their eyes. The four of them together are a strange combination, but functional and happy.

They belong everywhere and nowhere, more comfortable on open road than settled in a town. They solve crimes of the paranormal, they put on performances for ordinary people, and they curl up together in the dark of the night.

None of them would have it any other way.


End file.
